


Eighty-Five Degrees

by acedavestrider



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Eggnog, Getting Together, M/M, References to Sex, Trans Duck Newton, nothing explicit because im baby, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2021-01-30 12:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21428389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acedavestrider/pseuds/acedavestrider
Summary: “Duck, how quickly can you get dressed?”“Uh, I mean,” you stutter at the sudden change of pace. “It might take me a bit to find where you threw my pants, but-”“Great,” he interrupts. “Because Aubrey’s going to be here in about ninety-six seconds.”
Relationships: Indrid Cold/Duck Newton, mentioned Aubrey Little/Dani
Comments: 13
Kudos: 129





	Eighty-Five Degrees

**Author's Note:**

> well someone had to fuck mothman

“Would you like some eggnog?” 

You look up, and Indrid is slinking out of bed with all the grace of a baby deer with a broken leg, naked as the day he was born. He’s as lanky as they come, though he doesn’t seem to have any trouble moving around in the small space of the Winnebago, and he plucks a pair of ratty sweatpants off the ground with ease. He has to pull the drawstring taught to get them to stay up, but they slip down anyways and are only barely caught by his narrow hips. You watch the fabric dip downwards, revealing thin hip bones, and you avert your eyes at the sight of the light hair curling up his stomach. 

You still haven’t answered his question, but he doesn’t seem bothered by it. He pads over to his mini fridge, adjusting the dial on a space heater on the way, and starts rifling through his copious cartons of eggnog. 

He leans over to get a better look at the contents of his fridge, and you get a good view of the long curve of his back. His skin is dry despite the damp and humid air, and a few light purple marks dot his shoulders and hips. You spot the imprint of your hand at his waist and feel your jaw jump. 

Indrid bruises like a peach, overly pale skin mottling easily, but he had a much harder time breaking your skin. Blades don’t do much to you, and teeth tend to be blunter instruments when it comes to drawing blood. He did get one on you, eventually, and you rub an absent thumb over the sore spot under your collarbone with a tightness in your throat. 

He’s produced two cartons of eggnog, the brand you know he prefers, and he holds them up to you with a raised eyebrow. 

“Yeah,” you clear your throat, “Yeah, I’ll have some.” You just want something for your dry mouth, really, and you doubt Indrid has any ice water on him. 

He seems delighted that you’ve accepted his offer, and sets to pouring you a hefty glass. “Spiked?” he asks. 

“_ Yes _,” you say, a little too fast. You add, “Please,” at the end, once you’ve remembered your manners. 

Indrid prepares your drinks, a mug for him and a glass with an added shot of brandy for you, and joins you back on the bed. You accept your glass with a grunt, voice still not working properly, and he turns to you with a little smile like he finds you just so endearing. 

“Don’t feel obligated to stay,” he says flightily. “I know how humans can be about this sort of thing.” 

You take a sip of your eggnog and regret it immediately, because it’s completely fucking disgusting and rendered absolutely impalatable with the addition of alcohol. When you move to put it down, Indrid intercepts you and pours the contents of your glass into his mug with little fanfare, having anticipated your reaction. 

“I don’t uh… do this alot.” You’re extremely warm in the heat of his several space heaters, all of which are fire hazards in such an enclosed place, and his presence near you isn’t helping. Not that he’s giving off any body heat whatsoever, it’s more the idea of him that’s making you warm. 

“Yes, you made that abundantly clear,” he says with a smile. “You said it maybe a dozen times while we were-” 

“Yeah,” you interrupt. You swallow and take note of his skin again, spotting another bruise on his ribcage. “Sorry about, uh…” 

He follows your line of sight, looking down in surprise before laughing and waving you off. “That’s quite alright, nothing new,” he assures. His voice lowers a bit when he adds, “Though, do let me also extend my apologies for my… surprise at your body; I didn’t mean any harm by it.” 

You shrug and scratch lightly at one of the scars on your chest without thinking about it. “Not the worst reaction I’ve had,” you say. You try to make it sound light but Indrid gives you a little frown instead, so you change your train of thought. “But I mean, you’re a psychic-”

“Mystic.” 

“Mystic,” you correct. “So… you should’ve seen this coming right?” You gesture vaguely to your entire body, lower half still covered by flannel bedsheets. 

Indrid gives you a smile and you can see his eyes brighten from behind his red sunglasses. “Oh, I saw you coming,” he says easily, effectively reducing your lung capacity to almost zero. “I just didn’t have all the details.” 

“Of course, yeah,” you say, with an embarrassingly pubescent crack of your voice. 

Indrid’s grin simmers down to an easy smile and he tilts his head back to get a better look at you, taking in your disheveled form, messy hair and pink cheeks. “You _ really _don’t do this a lot, huh?” he says gently. 

You meet his eyes, as best as you can through his lenses. “You do?” 

He shrugs around a sip of eggnog. “Sure.” 

“With…?” 

“Men, women,” he waves a hand and narrows his eyes, “monsters.” 

Your eyebrows raise at this, and morbid curiosity takes over. “Anyone I’d know?” 

He thinks for a moment, then says, “Well, Barclay and I did briefly-”

“Ah, no,” you cry, hands coming up to cover your face. “No, shit, now I won’t be able to look at him.”

“You wanted to know,” Indrid points out, a smile prominent in his voice despite your obscured view. 

“I can’t believe I live in the universe where Bigfoot fucked Mothman!” 

“Well we weren’t in our true forms,” he explains. “That would’ve been completely impractical, I’m not even sure our respective species have the _ ability _to-”

“I can’t believe I live in the universe where _ I _fucked Mothman,” you realize suddenly, dropping your hands at the absurdity of it all, the absolutely ludicrous and now painfully real fact that you did, indeed, fuck Mothman. 

“You know that’s not my favorite nomenclature, Duck,” he says. “I can’t say that’s my preferred colloquialism, either.” 

You glance at him and feel your heart skip at the downward turn of his mouth, like maybe you hurt his feelings a little. “Sorry,” you say. “Did I mention that I don’t do this a lot?” 

He looks up at you, and from the angle you can get a glimpse of his eyes behind the sunglasses. They’re as red as the glass that covers them, not as vibrant as they perhaps were during the activities of the last hour or so, but still brilliant in hue. He drags a light knuckle against your jawline and says, “Yes Duck, several times, with increasing conviction. A bit loud at the end, too.” 

You let the breath you’d been holding puff out of your mouth in a gust and wheeze out, “Would you mind openin’ a window or something?” You think the heat is getting to your head. 

Indrid drops his hand from your face, though it stays close, grazing the bare skin of your thigh. “Ah, but then your talking sword might hear us,” he jokes. 

You grimace, recalling the moment when Indrid had tried his best to sensually remove Beacon from his position in the loops of your jeans, only for you to grab it from him and throw the sword through a hastily opened window in your resulting panic. You think you’re pretty okay with fucking Mothman at this point, but you draw the line at letting your talking, sentient sword bare witness to said fucking. 

Indrid laughs at your flustered disposition and reaches over to turn off the closest space heater. A shiver crawls down his back almost immediately and he puts his nearly empty mug of eggnog away in favor of lying down, warm blanket shrugged up to his waist. He puts his hands behind his head, sharp elbows jutting outwards as dangerous projectiles, and gives you a onceover. 

“I said you don’t have to stay if you don’t wish to,” he repeats, noting your stiff frame, the way you’re not looking directly at him. 

“I wanna stay,” you’re able to say easily. You run a nervous hand through your hair. “Just… what the hell do kids do these days when it comes to this kind of shit? Should I add you on… on Instagram? People use Instagram now, right? I feel like I’ve been out of the loop for a decade.” 

You get a shrug in response, paired with, “I’ve been out of the loop for about two hundred years.” 

“So you’re not on Instagram?” you confirm. 

“I do not have a cellular phone, Duck.” 

“Right…” You swallow and avert your eyes again, shifting under the blankets. You really have no idea what to do now; you can’t remember the last time you even went on a date, nevermind… all this. You’ve been a little busy with other extremely important things in between fighting abominations, such as forest management, fire safety, and watching a lot of reality television. The new season of The Bachelor has been just completely buckwild. 

“If you’re unsure how to proceed,” Indrid starts, “lying down with me might be a good start.” 

“Oh, uh, I’m kinda tired actually,” you stutter. “I’m not sure if I could really-”

A cool hand on your arm stops you mid sentence and Indrid says, “That’s not what I meant.” 

You nod and settle down onto the mattress, limbs a little awkward as you flop around, trying to get comfortable. It’s still far too hot to even be under the sheets, but you want to retain a little bit of your modesty so you cover your lower half and let a leg stick out into the damp air. Indrid has shifted onto his side, watching you flail about in an attempt to reduce the great discomfort pulling at your skin, and he gives you a light smile when you’ve finally come to rest. 

“You were surprised,” he recalls quietly, “when I invited you over.” 

You tilt your head up, just enough that you can look at him without catching his eye directly. “Yeah, well, not everyone can see the future,” you gripe. You then backtrack with, “Well - I mean - I can kind of see the future and I did have some dreams about you but not - not like _ this _-”

“You had dreams about me,” he repeats flatly, not an ounce of mockery in his tone. 

“No,” you say, quickly followed by, “Well yeah, but like - you know, _ normal dreams_, like… I mean, my dreams aren’t ever really normal, like they’re kinda nonsense just by definition but in this case they were-”

You cut yourself off when you see Indrid’s expression, they way he’s smiling at you like the stuff you’re babbling about isn’t completely incoherent. He just has his eyebrows raised and his lips pursed, waiting for you to finish whatever scrambled thought process you were desperately trying to follow, letting you ramble until you eventually come back around to answer his initial question. 

“Yeah, I was surprised,” you finish lamely. 

Indrid hums and blinks at you a few times. “I’ve been flirting with you for several months.” 

You take in a breath like you’re going to use it to speak, but then it just hangs in your lungs for a bit until you can get your bearings. “Yeah…” you drawl slowly. “I kinda got that impression but I didn’t wanna… It felt kinda self-centered to think you were comin’ onto me.” 

“But I was,” he says, and you feel your cheeks heat up even warmer than your already feverish body. 

“Yeah, but… why _ me_?” you ask. “I’m pretty unremarkable, all things considered. I mean, I’m decently fast and my skin is kinda impenetrable?”

“I did notice that,” he agrees, looking pointedly at the mark on your collarbone. 

“Yeah, and, you know, I make a mean chicken enchilada. And I know a lot about The Bachelor,” you add. “But other than that, I’m just…” You finish with a shrug and a noncommittal hand gesture. 

“I’ll be honest,” Indrid starts with another grin. “Your thighs have been looking great lately. They really drew me in.” 

“_Thank you! _ ” you exclaim, lifting up your uncovered leg to gesture at it with firm hands. “Glad _ someone _finally noticed, Ned and Aubrey haven’t said shit about it! I’ve been training my ass off.” 

“It shows,” he agrees, having shifted closer to you in the meantime. “Your physique is quite impressive these days.” 

“You think?” You poke experimentally at one of your biceps. “I feel like I could work more on my core strength? Maybe throw in some extra crunches?” 

“Maybe,” he muses, but his hand has snaked its way under the blankets and is resting on your hip, thumb pressing into your skin. “But Duck, beyond your formidable and frankly brilliant physical form-”

“My godlike constitution-”

“Your Herculean build,” he finishes with a grin, “I do find myself rather enamored with the rest of you, as well.” 

You swallow, and the blush on your cheeks from the combination of the still unbearably warm air and Indrid’s hand at your side starts to creep down your neck. If there’s one thing you’ve noticed about Indrid Cold that maybe the rest of your party hasn’t, it’s that he doesn’t know how to be anything other than sincere when it comes to certain things. He likes to play up the coy, cryptic future-seer bullshit when it’s appropriately dramatic of him, but otherwise you think he lacks the ability to hide any sort of genuine feelings. He just doesn’t seem to bother most of the time, and he’s spent the better part of the night repeatedly assuring you of just how elated he is at your acceptance of his invitation. 

You let out a nervous laugh at the earnest smile he’s giving you, paired with a muttered, “Shit,” as the last dregs of coherency abandon you. You bring an arm up to cover your steadily reddening face, hiding from Indrid’s warm gaze. He waits patiently for you to recover some semblance of lucidity, and you feel the light drag of his nails against your side. 

“Right back at you,” is the profound statement you’re eventually able to produce with your overly embarrassed, sex-adled brain. 

“Oh!” Indrid exclaims with a laugh, and he jostles you a little to dislodge your arm from your face. “How romantic, Duck! Tell me, have you always had such a way with words? Are all humans this well-spoken or is it a trait reserved for you, specifically?” 

“Shut up,” you grouse, feeling yourself pout at his jokes. “I’m _ trying_.” 

“I know,” he says, in a tone that’s slipped back into complete sincerity. His hand, unusually cold, trails up your side, your chest, your neck, to rest on your cheek. “I know,” he says again. “I appreciate the attempt, however poorly executed.” 

“I know this ain’t my strong suit,” you admit with a grimace. “But I’m just tryna say that I do, you know… _ like you_, in case I’m not makin’ that clear.” 

“I should certainly hope so,” he says with a laugh.

You’re burning up. You reach out to put a hand on the small of his back, the warmth of your skin immediately leeching away as his abnormally cold body cools you down. You pull him closer with very little pretense, until your chests are nearly touching, until he’s looking at you with wide eyes. 

It’s easy to kiss him, nevermind how difficult and overwhelming you found it when you’d initially come over. It’s easier now than anything else you could be doing, less challenging than trying to formulate a thought, nowhere near as difficult as trying to speak. The cool metal of his glasses presses into your cheek, and you remember how nervous you were about them at first, afraid of them getting in the way, or accidentally falling off and having to deal with furry wings unfurling on top of you. They weren’t a problem though, staying firmly in place even as other articles were pulled, tugged, and removed throughout the night. 

There’s a hand on your thigh now, anchoring you to the present as Indrid pulls you even closer to him. He’s started to warm under your hands, just barely, and his skin is less shockingly cold to the touch in your close proximity. You can feel him smiling against your mouth, pleased with the turn of events he may or may not have foreseen, and you’re just feeling the last coils of discomfort drain out of your muscles when Indrid sits up suddenly with a gasp, nearly elbowing you in the face. 

He stares absently into the middle distance for a moment before asking, “Duck, how quickly can you get dressed?” 

“Uh, I mean,” you stutter at the sudden change of pace. “It might take me a bit to find where you threw my pants, but-”

“Great,” he interrupts. “Because Aubrey’s going to be here in about ninety-six seconds.” 

“Oh, you’ve gotta be shitting me,” you groan. You shove the blankets off of you, modesty be damned, and get to work at finding your clothes. You find your underwear easily, but the rest of your garments are lost in a sea of dirty laundry and frantically scribbled sketches littering the floor. “You couldn’t have warned me earlier?” 

“I just saw it,” he explains sheepishly, following your lead and rifling around for something to cover up with. He manages to find a dirty hooded sweatshirt to pull on, then nearly collides with you as you both bumble around each other trying to find your pants. They’re just poking out from underneath his bed and you snatch them with a grunt, though they don’t go on very quickly. 

“Good lord, Duck,” Indrid comments at your struggle to get your jeans on. “Time is really of the essence here.” 

“Give me a fucking break,” you gripe, your limbs flailing in an odd dance as you try to shimmy into the stiff fabric. “They’re a lot tighter these days.” 

He cracks a smile at this but then it warps into a frown. “She took a shortcut.” 

“Goddammit,” you sigh, finally getting your jeans past your thighs. “That’s my bad, I’ve been showin’ her all the trails.” 

“How sweet of you,” Indrid comments in the same breath that he scoops a shirt off the floor and tosses it to you, the fabric lightly bumping against your face. "Let me do the talking or this will be extremely embarrassing for both of us," he instructs quickly.

You just manage to get the shirt over your head and look semi-normal sitting at the countertop table when Indrid throws the door open with a flourish and says, “Hello Aubrey.” 

She’s standing on the front step with her fist raised to knock, jacket preemptively removed in anticipation of the warmer environment and a plastic grocery bag clutched in her other hand. She looks surprised for about half a second before she drops her hand and says, “Hey!” 

Indrid gestures her inside and Aubrey just barely hides an uncomfortable grimace as she enters the irritatingly sticky air of the Winnebago, though she doesn’t say anything about it. She does let out a surprised “Oh!” upon spotting you at the table, where you’re desperately trying to look like you didn’t just have sex with Mothman. She slides into the booth across from you and says, “I didn’t know you’d be here, Duck!” 

You give her a smile you hope doesn’t look too nervous and say absolutely nothing, if only because it’s infinitely better than trying to lie. Aubrey’s expression narrows at your silence and she tilts her head. 

“You good?” she asks. Then she gives you a light jab on the arm. “Giant, magical cat got your tongue?”

You try to laugh but it sounds more like a pronounced, “Ha ha,” and Aubrey looks at you with her mouth half open, completely confused. Indrid is watching nearby with an expression like panic mixed with delight and you give him a desperate look until he joins you across from Aubrey. 

“Don’t mind him,” he says in your stead. “Just a small burn on the tongue from an overenthusiastically consumed cup of eggnog.” 

“Ah,” Aubrey says with a nod. You can tell she doesn’t believe him despite his easy tone, though she gives you a grin anyways. “Rookie mistake, Duck.” 

You just smile back and give a little shrug, hoping that the sweat on your brow doesn’t give you away. 

“What can I help you with, Aubrey?” Indrid asks. 

She procures the grocery bag and sets it on the table. “Just the usual supplements from Mama,” she says. “To help sustain you in between gallons of eggnog.” 

“I normally receive these deliveries on Wednesdays,” Indrid says, perusing the bag’s contents. “And they’re typically done by Barclay.” 

The question in his voice is loud and clear, and Aubrey’s expression shifts to be a little more sheepish. “Well,” she starts. “I wanted to get your… insight. About something.” 

“Yes?” 

“Valentine’s Day is Friday,” she explains further. “And you know, I maybe wanted to get some of my friends some things… and maybe I’m kind of debating what to give this one specific person, and maybe I also need to pick by tonight or else I won’t be able to get the two-day shipping, and so I need your future expertise to help me choose…?” 

“Mhm,” Indrid says with a nod, a light smile pulling at his mouth. “Give me a moment.” 

He closes his eyes, presumably to focus in on the hundreds of possible futures he seems to observe at any given moment. Aubrey watches in anticipation with shining eyes, though she doesn’t spot the way Indrid’s hand slides onto your thigh under the lip of the table. You try to hold in any reaction you might have to it, and instead join Aubrey in staring at Indrid, the way his brows crease and his lips purse just slightly in concentration. A few moments pass, and then he opens his eyes with a smile. 

“Dani will like anything you get her,” he concludes. “But the rabbit plush seems to be her favorite.” 

Aubrey breathes out a sigh of relief and leans against the back of the booth seat. “That’s what I thought,” she says. “But I wanted an expert’s opinion, you know? Really make sure I had my shit together on this one.” 

“You should follow your gut more often, Aubrey,” Indrid supplies, pulling the cryptic fortuneteller card again. 

“Yeah, maybe I will,” she agrees quietly. A moment of stillness passes in which Aubrey is staring at her hands, Indrid is staring at Aubrey, and you’re staring at Indrid, but it dissolves quickly when Aubrey smacks a hand on the table and announces her quick departure in order to complete her order within the shipping window. 

Indrid thanks her for delivering the vitamins and sees her out, but she stops by the door before exiting the RV. 

“Hey Duck?” she starts, and you turn to her with raised eyebrows. She pauses to take you in, eyes scanning your hunched and tired form with a certain level of scrutiny that makes you uncomfortable, until she says jovially, “Your thighs look great!” 

“Aw, thanks Aubrey,” you say, before realizing that you’re supposed to be suffering from a burn to the mouth and subsequently briefly mute. Your eyes go wide with panic but she doesn’t seem to notice, instead bidding the both of you goodbye and leaving into the cold night air. 

Indrid heaves a sigh once Aubrey's gone and rifles around in the grocery bag until he produces a plastic bottle of Flintstones vitamins. He pops the safety cover with his thumbnail and proceeds to down half a dozen chalky, brightly colored childrens' vitamins, washing them down with a swish of lukewarm eggnog. The bottle rattles as he tilts it towards you in offering, but you grimace and hold up a hand to decline.

"Well, that went better than it could have," he says. "There were at least four different futures in which this interaction resulted in an arduously long and incredibly uncomfortable conversation. I'm not sure if I would've had the energy for that."

“Yeah,” you agree, sliding out of the booth. You realize suddenly that the shirt Indrid had tossed you is not the shirt you came in wearing, which would explain why it’s annoyingly tight around your arms. You remove it with only a little bit of effort, and scour the dirty floor for the decade old Creed t-shirt you arrived with, having some idea of where it was thrown in the fray. A honey mustard stain you haven’t been able to get off for a few weeks helps you easily find the garment in a slightly less disgusting corner of the Winnie, and you pull it on with a small sigh. 

“You know,” you start, adjusting the fabric around your chest. “I uh… wouldn’t really mind Aubrey knowing about this… In another context, that is.”

“Oh?” Indrid speaks up after having been quiet while you rifled around for your shirt, save for the occasional crunch of a vitamin in his mouth. You don’t think all of them are supposed to be chewable. 

“Yeah, I mean…” You rub the back of your neck and feel your body temperature rise again, reaching that feverish pitch that makes your skin prickle. “Maybe you just wanted this to be a one time thing - which would be fine, y’know I’m not, uh, picky. Shit, I just mean...”

Indrid isn’t giving you anything, only looking at you with his eyebrows raised over his glasses. 

“I was just thinking, maybe, if you wanted, we could…” Your nerve is starting to dissolve at an unprecedented rate, and your coherence quickly goes with it. “Like, I’m on Facebook? I could change my status on Facebook? You know, to make things… more official if that’s… what you wanted. That’s what I want if… if you..” You trail off when you realize that Indrid is hardly suppressing a grin, bright eyes shining behind red glass. 

“Aw hell, Indrid,” you groan. “Did you hear me sayin’ all this already?” 

“Yes,” he admits comfortably, and his smile arrives in full. 

“And you just let me stand here and make an ass outta myself?” 

“Well you’re just so good at it.” 

You sigh, though an exhausted laugh does bubble out of you for a moment as you drag a hand across your eyes. “I’m trying to be serious,” you complain. 

“I know,” he says, a little softer this time. You feel the air cool as he approaches you, steps light. “I don’t have Facebook either, but maybe you’ll grant me the liberty of allowing things to continue _ officially, _regardless.” 

“I’ll consider it,” you mutter, staring down at the floor. 

You look up to find Indrid closer to you and feel yourself shift under the look he’s giving you, like maybe he wasn’t expecting you to answer in the affirmative, or maybe he did and is still delighted to hear it in person. Despite the nerves that’ve been prickling at your spine all night, and the additional discomfort of being in an eighty-five degree, very cramped RV camper, you don’t feel like leaving quite yet. Though the green, illuminated numbers on the face of Indrid’s microwave oven, which you can just glimpse over his shoulder, insists otherwise. 

You lament the fact that you need to be up at the asscrack of dawn tomorrow morning and Indrid steps away so you can gather the rest of your things. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t stall a little, taking more time than necessary to pull on and lace your shoes, shrug your jacket over increasingly sore shoulders, all while feeling an incessant pull in the pit of your stomach in the opposite direction. Indrid opens the door for you, and you stand on his front step, facing him while he remains in the safe, warm interior of the Winnebago. 

“Am I seeing you again?” he asks. 

“You tell me,” you joke back, but he just smiles. 

“It’s your choice.” Then he adds, with a tilt of his head like he’s listening to something you can’t hear, “Though Tuesday is going to be a bit slow for you, if you’d like to remedy that.” 

“Sure, Tuesday, yeah,” you stutter. 

You have no idea what else to say, having just agreed to kind of go steady with Mothman, and you think he can sense your discomfort by the way he’s looking at you. A cold finger curls into the belt loop of your jeans to pull you forward, and Indrid presses a last kiss against you in goodbye. 

You’re just starting to forget about leaving entirely when you hear a rustling in the leaves nearby, followed by a cry of, “_I knew it!” _

You startle away from Indrid to see Aubrey standing a few feet from the camper, hands on her hips and a twig sticking out of her hair, looking indignant and vindicated at the same time. 

“Son of a bitch,” you grumble at the same time that Indrid says cheerfully, “Hello again Aubrey.” 

“Did you know she would do that?” you ask him, tone accusatory. 

He grins and says, “Yes, of course.” 

“Duck Newton!” Aubrey calls from the ground. “Lying by ommission is still lying and you’re still terrible at it!” 

“Yeah, I know, Aubrey, thanks,” you say. You say goodbye to Indrid with a sigh and he gives you a little wave in return, annoyingly entertained with the situation. 

Aubrey hounds you with questions the moment you meet her outside, but you wave her off with a, “Hang on,” so you can go around the side of the RV to retrieve Beacon. He immediately tries to yell at you about discarding him so wantonly, but you send him back to his position as your belt and shut him up for the time being. 

“I need details, _ now_,” she insists, following your lead out of the forest. 

“I ain’t giving you any details, Aubrey!” You refuse to talk about your various, extremely personal sexual escapades with the young woman you see as a little sister, no matter how much she bothers you about it. 

“Okay, just one detail then,” she concedes. “Did you or did you not sleep with Mothman?” 

You clench your teeth at this, but your staunch silence convinces her more than any poorly veiled lie ever could.

She gasps at this, followed by, “Duck, you _ fucked Mothman?” _

“Jesus Christ, Aubrey,” you chastise. “You wanna say it a little louder so they can hear you in the next state over?” 

“I knew you didn’t burn your mouth on eggnog,” she repeats snidely. “No one besides Indrid actually likes it and I’m offended you thought I could be convinced otherwise.” 

“Yeah, yeah-”

“This is insane,” she interrupts, and you start having trouble keeping up with her rapid pace through the woods. “Barclay’s gonna eat his words.” 

You let out an involuntary groan at the mention of Barclay and the information you learned about him tonight, but Aubrey doesn’t notice or care. Instead she continues talking your ear off about how she’s been waiting for you and Indrid to get together for weeks, and how proud of you she is for finally doing something about it. 

“Thanks,” you mutter, more genuine this time. “Now let’s drop the subject forever, okay?” 

“I’ll drop the subject for now but I’m picking it back up on Tuesday,” she supplies with a wink. 

“Okay, fine,” you yield. 

You continue your trek through the darkening forest in relative silence, though Aubrey gives you a playful shove in the shoulder and a little look every once in a while to remind you that she hasn’t forgotten. It makes you smile despite yourself, and you feel like a teenager sharing secrets with a friend, getting up to no good in the middle of the night. The moon rises over the trees as you walk together, you spy a pair of bats flitting among the leaves, and you start looking forward to Tuesday a little more. 

**Author's Note:**

> idk when this takes place like... chronologically?? so its up to yall, choose your own adventure
> 
> is this out of character? maybe. did i have fun writing it? also maybe
> 
> thanks for reading! leave a comment if you want!


End file.
